Why are Horde more successful than Alliance at raiding and PVP?

I’ve always wanted to play Alliance, but the lack of maturity and ability to play a simple game always makes me roll Horde again.

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Combo of snowball and ripple effects.

When Legion came out, Horde racials became the most appealing for most high-end activities, leading super minmaxxy high end content players and guilds to transfer to Horde. Popular streamers/youtubers catch wind of this and also transfer to Horde. Streamer followers take streamers’ actions as truth and gospel and also transfer. People rolling alts see all this activity and wanting to take part in all the action also roll Horde. Blizzard finally responds by giving Alliance allied races good racials, but it’s too little waaaaay the hell too late.

End result: most competitively-oriented players now play Horde.

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Because in MoP, most racials were broken. And then people seem to mostly care about racials when it comes to progressions in PVE or to be better in PVP.

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Most competitive players have ALWAYS been Horde. SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME.

Back in Vanilla at least, for PvE Alliance was where it was at. Having fear ward from dwarf priests and exclusive access to paladins and super short flights to nearly all relevant raiding content tipped the scales pretty heavily. The whole reason Horde was given Blood Elves and paladins in TBC was because the max level population tilted so heavily in favor of Alliance.

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Because why eat vanilla ice cream when you can have a dozen other flavours?

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You know how today is the culmination of every day that preceded it? Or the “every trip starts with a single step”?

Welcome to the culmination of more than a decade of WOW. There was a video that attempted to explain how this imbalance happened, and according to the author, it should have been snipped in the bud back in the days of TBC, and even then, the social forces at work have basically doomed the Alliance. Yeah, the Horde had overpowered racials for PVE, but now they don’t, but that doesn’t mean players are just going to switch to Alliance: they came for the overpowered racials, but they stayed for the incredibly large talent pool.

Even if both factions were mechanically equal, their storylines were equally good, and their star NPCs were morally on the same page (hint: if the reason Sylvanas is a total PITA is to sicken Horde players enough to transfer to Alliance, it isn’t ever going to work) the larger talent pool that the Horde has accumulated over the years is basically why they’re more successful.

“But there are a lot of bad players and casuals on the Horde, Kabbie.” Yeah, there are, but the Alliance has them too, and you can always train a bad player into a good one, you can always get a casual to be less casual, but a larger talent pool is a larger talent pool. Like that thing where the Alliance can’t even scrape up 100 mythic-quality raiding guilds to take down Jaina while the Horde is just sitting and waiting for the Alliance to catch up? That’s just numbers: you can’t beat sheer numbers.

And short of a no-strings attached free faction switch to Alliance, Blizzard cannot seem to entice players to go Alliance - not with mounts, not with making Sylvanas absolutely repulsive while making Anduin look pure and pristine, not with incredibly appealing allied races. (And no, 30% off the faction switch isn’t good enough: that’s not an enticement to go Alliance, that’s throwing less money away. But it’s tempting as hell for Alliance players who have to go Horde if they want access to more players!) Even with the “Two Sides to Every Story” achievement, I may get an Alliance character to finish the story to get my mount, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stick around for endgame.

This isn’t to say that the Alliance is bereft of talented players - they have a lot of great players, just not enough.

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A) The horde is just more interesting and not the same old fantasy setting.

B) Every thing about the horde preaches teamwork.

C) in the Alliance you are the hero. In the horde you are a valuable cog in the machine that is the horde.

D) the Alliance is shackled with gnomes. It is had to take the alliance serious with them. I am joking with this one.

Above all else … The two sides just attract people with different mindsets.

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Every response ive heard today on the matter doesn’t actually answer the question, it has nothing to do with anything people have said thus far and the only thing remotely close is someone mentioning racials. The answer is that the Horde has better raiders/pvps. Even if the difference at first was only 0.1% better, it is perceived by the community as better so all the people looking to be competitive go Horde then that number increases tremendously because of the perception that they are better. It has been something that has happened with MMOs for ages now, it even happens with servers.

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Hold on, I forgot my tin foil hat.

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Because that’s where the elites are

Wrong, I’ve been a hero of the horde even tho these stinky trolls could never accomplish what my Paladin has

Players flock to whichever faction they perceive to be “the best”. Historically it has been horde, but it was Alliance for a couple years there not too long ago.

There is nothing cool to play in the Alliance side. People telling you it’s racials are just making excuses. There is no fantasy in the Alliance. More than half of their race options are humans. That is extremely boring to me. Only recently have they added light forged dranai or void elves. Aside from that every other race is a variation of human: regular human, fat human, small human, small human that looks metal, etc. Every mount you get is a horse. Every story arch you get is all about alliance being good and nice and never baddies. There is no complexity to your hero’s or developing lore. The last time the Alliance had a compelling story was during wrath of the lich king as Arthas was truly amazing. If I want a bit more spice in my life I will go horde. That’s just the truth.

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I see this stated constantly but as much as I like tauren and trolls (they’re my go-to horde races), I find the reasoning a little silly. I guess Horde are more “cool” if you’re looking for a race with an edge to it (arguably not true for the massive swath of Horde elf players), but even that could be chalked up to lack of imagination. Most Alliance races aren’t edgy by default but there’s nothing stopping one’s own character from being edgy. Aside from that, the argument feels suspiciously similar to how some people refuse to watch certain TV shows and movies because they’re not “mature” enough.

The reason is simple its because “De Zandalari built an empire dat would endure for over ten-thousand years…while your barbaric ancestors scuffled in de dirt. WE conquered this world. WE brought it glory. You…you are nothing. Merely de latest in a long line of savages seeking to undermine our greatness.”

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Its silly because its not true.

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I remember back in WoD alliance dominated PvP, horde cried so bad and things switched so they could dominate PvP when they were already dominating the raiding scene.

Now they dominate PvP, Raiding and Mythic+.

The moment the alliance dominates something, the horde is gonna cry.

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So we can agree that the horde crying about the human racial back in WoD were just making excuses?

Rofl, i always find this funny. Blood elf are almost half of the population of the horde, you know the boring yellow humans.

That “fantasy” people talk about the horde is a joke.

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Initially, the Alliance has the upper hand due to more familiar races (for people coming from traditional fantasy games like Everquest). Because of that the player count was heavily skewed Alliance.

When TBC was released they counterbalanced it by adding Blood Elves to the Horde, which did help a lot hence the large percentage of Horde characters that are Elves.

As time went on the presence of traditional Elves, and the changes to racial abilities on both sides lead to people moving to Horde for PvE, and later PvP activities, and that’s just gotten worse as time went on. It escalated even more when larger raid teams moved to the Horde, causing a trickle down effect.

Hence our current situation.

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